Drum roll please

I've been looking at sales figure for 2014 and thought this would be a good opportunity to give a little mention/fanfare to some of our best sellers. This is a highly unscientifically researched list as it includes all sales from 1st Jan - 31st Dec and is not weighted in any way to take account of new products introduced during the year, or seasonal lines. I think there are also some spurious sales which skew the results (like the French Sticks being used in buffets in great quantities). So any shopkeepers out there might not want to use this as a buying guide. But for those who want to give a little round of applause to our caveat-ed 2014 best sellers, here they are...

Most Popular Bread: French Stick, followed very closely (57 fewer) by the small white farmhouse (sliced).

Most in Demand Breakfast Cereal: Midfields Granola, original granola. Although by weight we sold more of the wheat free version as we have that in 500g and 1kg bags. See, this research lark is highly dubious!

Most Purchased Cake / Biscuit: In a packet the Gingerbread man was the best selling, from our counter, the Marathon Flapjack won. I might need to develop a cross between those two items. It's bound to be a runaway success! (sorry)  "Run Run as fast as you can, you can't catch me, I'm the marathon gingerbread man".

Most Favoured Chutney / Pickle / Mustard: Raydale Preserves Goats' Cheese Lover's Chutney / Biona Cornichons / Tracklements Strong English Mustard (closely followed by German Mustard which actually sold more online). We've seen a huge increase in sales of Strong English Mustard recently. I've no idea why, but according to Tracklements we aren't the only shop to notice.

Most Appropriated Coffee: Beanberry Coffee Company Yirgacheffe Coffee Beans. A really problematic category to study "properly" as our coffee beans are freshly roasted and therefore not all of them are available at all times of the year.

Most Requisitioned Cooking Sauce: Anila's Spicy Medium Curry Sauce continues to outsell all the other curry sauces, and all the pasta sauces as well. Always has done.

Most Sought After Confectionery: Licorice Log. I'm pleased to see RJs are still doing well here. The bags of licorice were the first line we carried to sell 100 units, way back in 2007.

Most Crowd Pleasing Crackers: Stockan's Thin triangular oatcakes. Also, the cheapest item in this list at just 65p per pack. They have to sell well to pay the rent on their tiny bit of shop!

Most Popular Crisps/Nuts: Tomato & Basil Pastinos, which was a surprise to me. I would have said Piper's Anglesey Sea Salt crisps would have been the best seller in this category, but they weren't even second; that was a tie between the Lemon Pastinos and Piper's sea salt and cider vinegar crisps.

... Cheese: Snowdonia Cheese Company Black Bomber (beating the second place cheese by more than 67kg).

... Ice Cream: Salcombe Dairy Madagascan Vanilla.

... Jam / Marmalade / Honey:  Susie's Strawberry Jam and Susie's Three Fruit Marmalade / Berkshire Honey. The honey statistics are really unfair as months go by when I don't have some of our honey varieties whilst I wait for the weather to warm up and the bees to produce more.

... Milk: Semi-skimmed one litre. The second most popular milk was the one litre non-homogenised organic milk. But it was more than one thousand units behind, so not exactly a close contest! I suspect that this year we might sell more of the non-homogensised full fat milk as customers are seeking it out for toddlers and to make their own cheeses.

... Oil/Vinegar: Not a level playing field. Technically the best selling oil was coconut oil. But we only have two varieties of that and more than a dozen different plain extra virgin olive oils (and plenty of flavoured ones as well).  So I'm also going to declare Zaytoun's Palestinian Extra Virgin Olive Oil a winner as well. Even though it was actually 4th after coconut oil, rapeseed oil (which we had 2 versions of) and ghee (we only have one variety).

Similarly, the best selling vinegar was Raw Health Apple Cider Vinegar with Mother, but that is used in far more ways than any of our balsamics, and we only offer one cider vinegar.

... Olives/Antipasti: Our best selling product in a jar was the Sun dried tomato meze from Olive Branch. The versatility of this product sort of gives it a head start in the sales figures. Antipasti, dip, sandwich filling, pasta sauce, salad dressing.... I'm not exactly comparing like with like so it's hard for a jar of olives to compete.

... Pasta: A tie! We sold exactly the same quantity of two pastas last year. Both were penne! Seggiano organic penne rigate and Biona wholemeal penne.

... Prepared Meal: In first place the single portion Cottage Pie. In second place the twin portion Cottage Pie. That's a good cottage pie!



... Soft Drink: Luscombe Farm's Wild Elderflower Bubbly (by one single bottle!), in second place was Whole Earth Sparkling Cranberry.

... Soup: Amy's Kitchen organic Rustic Italian vegetable soup sold one more unit than Mouthful's fresh Chicken and Corn Soup (but we only stock the fresh soup in the winter so really the chicken soup is the winner here).

 ... Tea: Another definitive winner. Darvilles of Windsor's 25 English Breakfast tea bags were in first place, with Darville's 50 English Breakfast tea bags in second place. Same tea, different packaging. So I can confidently say my customers love Darville's English Breakfast!

Maybe one day I can have a little awards ceremony. I'll need to think of more synonyms for popular before that.

Great Taste Awards Revisited

When I wrote my blog entry about the 2012 Great Taste Awards I intended to add a photo collage of all the winners we stock. I realised it might take me a while, so I published the post with the intention of returning to it later to add the photographs. Twelve months, and forty blog posts, later, and I've still not produced the collage. So I wrote a post about the 2013 award winners. And again I thought a nice collage would be a good idea. For a couple of weeks I really thought I would return to it and add photographs. I really did! But it gradually dawned on me that was not going to happen. I then had another idea. Pinterest! I could make a pinterest board of all our award winners. It still took ages to gather together the images, but I didn't have to worry about the sizes and layout. So here it is, our Great Taste Award Winners 2013!

Tastes Delicatessen ABC

I rather like the advertising on the back of the Wilkinson's lorries at the moment. From Aftersun to Batteries C.... Zinc capsules.

It reminds me of a book my grandparents gave me when I was a child. In the book, Big Bird and I were on a scavenger hunt (my name was actually in the story - a bigger deal in the 1980s than today!). We had to find something for every letter of the alphabet. So in homage to my Sesame Street Scavenger Hunt, here is Tastes Delicatessen A-Z:

Apples, Biscuits, Cheese, Dulce de Leche, Eggs, Fluff, Gingerbread, Honey, Ice cream, Jam, Kaffir lime leaves, Lemons, Mustard, Nougat, Olives, Pate, Quiche, Root beer, Scotch eggs, Tea, Uncle Joe's mint balls, Vinegar, Wedding cakes, Xacuti curry powder, Yoghurt, Zahtar.

It was actually easier than I expected and I didn't have to resort to using adjectives like Wilkinson's "yellow duster", although maybe the mint balls was a bit of a cheat (it was that or unsalted butter).

I'm also amazed by the prevalence of the letter C. I could have managed 26 items starting with the letter C alone; chutney, cheese, chocolate, crackers, conserves, cured meats, crisps, condiments, cookies, cassoulet, curry sauce, capers, crispbread, chorizo, cous cous, chilli sauce, clementines, consomme, chickpeas, coffee, cake, cranberry juice, cheese wedding cakes, chopped tomatoes, coconut milk, cream, confit de Canard.

Henshelwoods Jams and Mustard

We are often asked where we find all our stock. And to be honest I'm always on the look out for new products and find them all over the place. One range in particular, has a particularly unusual source...

I use the post office in my home village (as well as the one in Eton, of course) and the postmaster knows who I am and all about the shop. A few months ago a regular post office customer came in to excitedly collect a parcel, got chatting to the postmaster, Raj, and told him all about the contents of the box; jams and mustard from Henshelwoods. She loved the products but couldn't get them anywhere locally so had them sent from Scotland. Raj suggested she contact me. A letter was written and passed to me, on my next visit to the post office. I contacted Henshelwoods and before long their award winning jams and mustards were making their debut in Eton. (And I was providing a mail order delivery service to my home village!).

Great Taste Awards 2007

The judging for the Great Taste Awards has been completed and this year's winners have been announced. More than 4500 foods were entered. Each one was blind tasted (some by me!) and judged on its own merits. Fewer awards have been given than in previous years, so it is especially nice to see so many familiar names among the award winners. My local preservers did very well! This was the first time Suzanne had entered and she won awards for both her Hot Banana Chutney and Red Onion Marmalade! And Susie added to the award she won for her Mango Chutney last year, with an award for her very popular Fig Chutney. And the other Susie, won awards for her crumbly vanilla fudge, very cherry fudge and brown sugar maple pecan fudge (I didn't even know she had entered!). John and Mary's Sweet Redcurrant Vinegar was also awarded.

Jules and Sharpie, who have collected numerous awards over the past few years, won some more this year: for their Hot Redcurrant Jelly, Hot Pear Chutney and Hot mmmmarmalade. Tracklements also added to their collection with awards for their Thai Jelly, Spiced Honey Mustard, Horseraddish & Cream, and my favourite, their Onion Marmalade. Stokes, makers of fantastic mayonnaise won an award for their Herb Mayonnaise. Shropshire Fine Herbs won awards for their oatmeal biscuits for cheese and Piper's won awards for both Anglesey sea salt and Sea salt and Somerset cider vinegar crisps. Pukka Teas won awards for their revitalise, refresh, relax and clarity herbal teas and Luscombe for their Organic Sicilian Lemonade. The Nunez de Prado Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil from Spain also won an award, as did many other Spanish foods including the Date and Walnut bars, 1000 flower mountain honey and creamy Marcona almonds. RJ’s natural licorice was the only winner in the liquorice category.

Even the chilled and frozen foods were judged at the Great Taste Awards and many of our producers excelled. Alder Tree for their Christmas ice cream (which isn't a flavour I stock, but will certainly try now as everything I've tasted of theirs has been fantastic). The Dairy House won two awards for their yoghurts, Trioni for their Strawberry milkshake and Patchwork for their handmade pates. Mike's Smokehouse won another award for their Hot Roast Salmon.

Anila did amazingly well and won two of only forty-six 3 star awards; for her spicy mild and spicy korma curry sauces. Honeybuns won another of the 3 star awards for their deliciously Moorish Almondi cookie.

The regional, national, international and 2007 Supreme Champion will all be announced in September. Here's hoping some of the wonderful producers we stock collect some more prizes.